Field of Invention
The invention relates to providing a timely and customized response to the notification of an opportunity to expose a visitor to networked content by predicting the conversion timing of the visitor.
Description of Related Art
Online advertisements can help drive a prospective customer through a conversion funnel. In many cases, advertisers will engage one or more parties, such as media partners, demand side platform operators and intention marketing platform operators to help drive conversions with networked advertising exposures. A party may be monitored, paid or evaluated based on the number of conversions which are attributed to their operations.
It is not unusual for a prospective customer to be exposed to multiple networked advertisements before they convert. Presumably, some of these exposures contribute to driving conversions, while others don't. Many attribution schemes are related to the timing of an advertising exposure, such as a “last touch” attribution scheme, which attributes credit to the advertisement which most recently preceded the customer's conversion. Assessing the likelihood of a prospective customer's conversion is useful for parties working towards driving conversions. Additionally, it would be advantageous for a party which is compensated based on an attribution scheme which is related to the timing of an advertising exposure, to estimate the conversion timing for a prospective customer so that they can take proper, timely action, such as setting an appropriate bid price or formatting a creative which is suitable for the prospective customer's funnel stage.
Online vendors would also benefit from the ability to rapidly understand the conversion timing of a prospective customer which is engaged on their website in order to provide custom content or customized offers which may be tuned to the prospective customer's likely funnel stage.
What is needed is a way to model conversion timing for a prospective customer, so parties can take appropriate, timely action.